of preserving her life for the comfort of those who had perhaps not perished, and, with a happy inspiration, indicated to her Marceau's cabriolet, the one vehicle attached to the staff. "Get in at once, we are just starting. A trusty officer shall escort you; you shall be alone, you shall be free, and I hope we may find again those whom you have lost."

"I should like," said Angélique, returning to the considerations of ordinary life, "to fetch a parcel which I had left in a house in the town."

"Be it so, give your own orders." And Savary charged his adjunct" to accompany the carriage, and to secure for the young lady a private room, and secrecy from the bloodthirsty representatives. In the evening, at Laval, he found opportunity of speaking to the generals alone, who requested to be introduced to his protégée. If it be really the case, as some romantic biographers have suggested, that in this one interview-of which Kléber has recorded that "never did I see a prettier or a more interesting woman"-the Republican and the Royalist lost their hearts to each other, we agree with Ernouf that it was quick work"; but certain it is that Marceau exerted himself to find shelter for her with a respectable couple, and that at his departure next day he left with her the following safe-conduct, "a pious fiction":

The citizeness Desmesliers, born at Nantes, dwelling at Montfauçon, having declared to us that her mother had forced her to follow the rebel army, and that she now surrenders to us, forsaking the rebel army, and engaging to live henceforth as a good citizeness, demands for her safety the present attestation :

I declare that the citizeness above-named has surrendered of her freewill at my head-quarters, the 22 frimaire, an II of the Republic one and indivisible. MARCEAU.

"I recollected," he said, when next he met Emira, "that she was of your sex, and perhaps she had once had a brother who adored her."

But in the wake of the army ever followed the commissioners, swooping down with domiciliary visits, and orders to householders to declare the number of their inmates. The next we hear of Angélique is in this letter to her aunt from the prison at Laval :

What dreadful things have happened since last I saw you! You know that Mama and all of us had moved to the country: we were living there quietly when people frightened us so about the Republican army, that my mother decided to fly. In the horrible rout at Le Mans I sought only death.

I surrendered to

I have found nothing but pity from the Republicans. General Marceau, who has treated me not only with humanity, but indeed with

infinite courtesy and generosity. He has himself conducted me to Laval,' where, despite the attestation that I had yielded voluntarily, I have been brought here, where I have been for six days. People bid me hope my youth will save me. But, dear aunt, where is my mother, my sister? I myself am beggared. Cannot you get me acquitted? Your title of Republican will surely give you rights. I trust that you will welcome to your home the innocent daughter of a beloved mother. ANGÉLIQUE DEsmesliers.

Angélique showed her passport; it was powerless to save her, but powerful to wound him who gave it. She was condemned, with seven other women, "for having followed the brigands, and consequently being factors and accomplices in their murders and pillages," and a writ of accusation was being made out against the general "for giving quarter to a rebel in arms," when the agent Bourbotte, mindful of his rescue at Saumur, cried, "If Marceau goes to the scaffold, I go too!" and indignantly tore up the papers. Twenty romance-writers have repeated the story that Marceau, on hearing of her peril, rode post haste from the Ardennes to Paris, and from Paris to Laval, and that when he dashed into the market-place, bearing aloft the Convention's pardon, he saw the executioner holding up her head to the people. "But who can suppose," justly remarks Wallon, "that a general on active service could leave his post on such an errand?" There is another tale, contested indeed, but resting on better authority. Marceau was on sick leave, staying at the château of his aide-de-camp near Rennes. While sitting in the garden with his hostesses, a packet was brought him from the executioner of Rennes, forwarded from his confrère of Laval. Marceau shuddered and made as if to reject it. "Oh, you had better just see what it is!" said the ladies. On opening it there appeared a gold watch of small value, such as would be given to a schoolgirl, fastened to a black silk cord, and with this note :

M. le général, on leaving our prison, to conduct to execution a young Vendean lady brought here from Le Mans, she gave me this little watch, which she carried hidden in her breast, and she said to me, "Promise me before God to remit to M. le général Marceau, wherever he may be, the only pledge I can give him of my gratitude." I promised, M. le général, and I keep my word.

EXECUTIONER.

"Poor child!" cried the general, bursting into a flood of tears. "I had promised that she should live.”

But this is anticipating. From Laval Marceau pursued the Vendeans to the Loire, which he had predicted "would be their tomb," and thence to Savenay, where he was checked by an order from the tardy General Thurreau to wait till he should come to take the

Savary seems left out in the cold. We suggest, though it spoils the romance, that Angélique, in her surry, did not know one man in blue from another.

command. Marceau was about to return a sharp answer, which, by the advice of his elders, he toned down to "I shall attack at dawn to-morrow. If thou wouldst see the end of the war come quickly." The attack was nearly thrown into confusion by the irrepressible Prieur taking on himself to cry, "Come on, comrades! forward! forward!" "Do try and stop this screeching" (criaillerie), said Kléber in despair to Marceau, "or we shall find ourselves at Nantes with the enemy at our backs." "Prieur," said Marceau, in his sternest tone, "this is not thy place, and thou might'st get an awkward musket-ball or a charge of shot." Hereupon Prieur and his "company of musicians" retired, and the war was ended-at least, all that deserved the name of warfare. What remained was not work for such men as Marceau and Kléber.

Thurreau took the usual revenge of writing complaints of his rivals' "lukewarm patriotism." They protested, but what availed striving against a general who had a brother an agent in mission? When the Jacobin Club of Nantes presented civic crowns to the conquering generals, the agent Thurreau sprang to the tribune to denounce these honours "stinking of the ancient régime." "It is to the soldiers," he cried, "who win the victories, who bear the toils and hardships of war, that crowns are owing." Kléber replied with force, "We, who have risen from the ranks, know that; and our soldiers, who each may hope to rise, know that a thousand arms are useless unless directed by one head. We accept this crown only to attach it to our comrades' flag." The applause was for Kléber.

Marceau had a stormy interview with General Thurreau, which resulted in the younger man demanding indignantly an apology or a duel, neither of which would the new-made commander grant to one henceforth his subordinate. "A brave man," retorted Marceau, "would have come to assume his command on the battle-field." However, the matter ended in Marceau's being sent under arrest to Châteaubriand, where he fell ill and was removed to the château of the ci-devant Count of Châteaugiron, father of Hippolyte Le Prestre, his aide-de-camp. And here Marceau found what went some way to console him for his own disgrace, and for the conflagrations and fusillades which, as he repeated in every letter to Sergent, were just the way to swell the rebel battalions.

Hippolyte Le Prestre had a sister Agathe, seventeen years old, tall, well-made, with blonde hair, large blue eyes, and dazzling white skin. The rule that the aide-de-camp falls in love with the general's daughter is probably modified when the general is younger than his aide. Marceau believed that his passion was returned, but he durst VOL. CCLXXIII. NO. 1940.

M

not speak, because the parents belonged to that numerous class of Royalists at heart who contributed one son to the Republican armies as a paratonnerre. However, one day the countess, seated by her guest's bedside, exclaimed in enthusiasm, "Happy is the mother of such a son!" The eager look in two pairs of young eyes showed her how matters stood. Marceau's suit was received with joy by the mother, but by the father with execrations, and oaths never to give his daughter to a devastator of the Vendée; and the lovers could only swear fidelity to each other, and wait till the completion of Agathe's twenty-first year should make the consent of one parent sufficient. Emira, sister-like, was for her brother breaking off at once with a family which had had the bad taste not to welcome him. Kléber, on the contrary, cheered him with hopes that new honours might melt the father's heart; and, sustained by the mother's permission to correspond with her, and at rare intervals to enclose a note for her daughter, the convalescent suitor departed for Paris— to be patched up in more senses than one, for Thurreau had been before him with tales, and the Committee of Public Safety was already calling him to account for having levied no contributions in the Vendée.

"I say nought to thee of the state of public opinion," wrote Marceau from Paris to his old friend Maugars. "It is here more than anywhere a whirlpool into which one must take care not to be sucked, a burning ray of which one must avoid the heat. So I show myself nowhere, I flee committees and bureaux, and keep myself to myself; it is the safest policy." However, he was introduced by the ever faithful Sergent to Carnot, then on the Committee of Public Safety. "You are very young to win battles," said the future War Minister, looking up in amazement at the boyish figure before him. Hearing that Marceau had never been reimbursed for the horses he had lost, Carnot called a subordinate: "How is this?" "Because the general's applications were not made quite in proper form." "The general," said Carnot, "does not stand upon form when his horses are shot under him. Send him his money at once. The Austrians are to be beaten again; our new commander must be mounted." And Marceau, to his delight, was appointed to the army of Sambre-et-Meuse, as General of division under Jourdan, and with opportunities of gaining laurels which, unlike those of the Vendée, would not be "stained with French blood!"

The last years of Marceau's life were probably the happiest. Uninterrupted successes, friendly relations with his commander-in-chief and with all his comrades, opportunities of seeing Emira, who, overcoming her scruples about divorce, had at last consented to marry

and share the exile of her devoted Sergent, when he was proceeded against as regicide and Septembriseur; and, finally, the company of Constantin Maugars, to whom Marceau writes in a strain which proves him guiltless of forgetting old friends for new ones:

Sept. 8, 1794, on the battle-field of Blendorf.

Tell me when thou art coming. Oh my friend thou neglectest me and makest me think thou dost not love me as I do thee. Only one letter from thee in two months! Thou wilt confess I hope that it is not reassuring especially now when I should be so glad to know thee well in health and ready to come and help me to finish a campaign which has been so fortunate for us.

A thousand things to our friends. In a few days I shall be fighting will give thee my news and will love thee always the same that is more than any man living.

Tell me if I can do anything for thee. Embrace our friends. I am longing and pining to see thee.

This appeal had its effect, as appears from the next letter (written from Bonn, November 29, 1794):

Thou art coming at last. I am content. Set out at once and lose no time. What are 100 lives more or less? I can never pay too dear the pleasure of seeing thee. So quick and make speed.

Maugars succeeded Le Prestre as Marceau's aide-de-camp, and they lived like brethren, with all in common, Maugars refusing promotion for fear of being parted from his friend. He was probably the aide-de-camp under whose guidance the fugitives Sergent and Emira first arrived at Coblentz, where Marceau dared not receive them, for fear of betraying Sergent to the agents in mission. But he sent them by a staff-officer forty-seven louis, a passport, and a letter of recommendation to the ladies on whom he was quartered; and, finding himself unexpectedly in their neighbourhood, he came at nightfall to visit them, and to take Emira away to be married decorously from her brother's household. An Austrian spied the blue uniform under the civilian overcoat, and next day Sergent was arrested by the Austrian authorities, and the papers signed by Marceau were found on him. These saved him. No Austrian would harm the protégé of the general who levied no requisitions; and after a few days' nominal confinement, Sergent was allowed to retire to Basle, where Emira joined him, and the two entered upon a happy union of forty years, Emira working with her husband at the engraver's trade, and on holidays going mountaineering with him, and astonishing him by her power of crossing torrents on tree-trunks.

Marceau is described at this period as showing "" a decent gaiety" in society, avoiding political or military topics, but ready, in ladies' company, with song or improvised verse, or as a partner in